The Maya, Matthew Restall
The Maya, Matthew Restall
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The Maya
A Very Short Introduction

Author: Matthew Restall, Amara Solari

Narrator: Tim Campbell

Unabridged: 3 hr 20 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 11/17/2020


Synopsis

The Maya forged one of the greatest societies in the history of the ancient Americas and in all of human history. Long before contact with Europeans, Maya communities built spectacular cities with large, well-fed large populations. They mastered the visual arts, and developed a sophisticated writing system that recorded extraordinary knowledge in calendrics, mathematics, and astronomy. The Maya achieved all this without area-wide centralized control. There was never a single, unified Maya state or empire, but always numerous, evolving ethnic groups speaking dozens of distinct Mayan languages. The people we call "Maya" never thought of themselves as such; yet something definable, unique, and endlessly fascinating—what we call Maya culture—has clearly existed for millennia. So what was their self-identity and how did Maya civilization come to be "invented?"

With the Maya historically subdivided and misunderstood in so many ways, the pursuit of what made them "the Maya" is all the more important. In this Very Short Introduction, Restall and Solari explore the themes of Maya identity, city-state political culture, art and architecture, the Maya concept of the cosmos, and the Maya experience of contact with including invasion by outsiders.

About Matthew Restall

Matthew Restall is the Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Latin American History and director of Latin American Studies at the Pennsylvania State University. He has written twenty books and sixty articles and essays on the histories of the Mayas, of Africans in Spanish America, and of the Spanish Conquest. He lives in State College, Pennsylvania, with his wife and four daughters.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Thomas on December 30, 2021

Too many new names for my tiny brain to comprehend......more

Goodreads review by Cav on November 17, 2021

"The Maya forged the greatest society in the history of the ancient Americas and one of the great societies in human history. For thousands of years they have lived—and continue to live—in the region that today comprises southern Mexico and its Yucatan Peninsula, Guatemala, Belize, northwestern Hond......more

Goodreads review by Michael on April 09, 2022

* Broad history outline: Maya achieved advanced culture without a centralize polity. Their history is separated into 3 periods with the classic period (250-950 CE) more advanced than before or after. The region had been settled by 9000 BCE with maize farming by 3000 BCE. In their creation myth men ar......more

Goodreads review by Ahdom on August 11, 2021

I picked this up in anticipation of a trip to Cozumel, Mexico. I already planned to read this book as part of the personal syllabus I have created to learn more about myths, religions, and antiquity. I have visited the sights of Tulum and Chichen Itza and I hope to visit many more Mayan sites. This......more

Goodreads review by Brock on August 12, 2024

Instead of taking my meds tonight I instead decided to spend about an hour and a half reading an introduction to Mayan society in anticipation for my reading of the journals and autobiographies of Bernal Diaz del Castillo who wrote about his time as a Spanish conquistador under Hernan Cortez when he......more